Additional Images

Provenance:

Isaacs Gallery, Toronto.
Private Collection, Toronto.

Literature:

William Kurelek, “Big Lonely,” Isaac’s Gallery (letter), Toronto, not dated.
Patricia Morely, “Kurelek,” Toronto, 1986, pages 190 and 201.
Ramsay Cook, “Kurelek Country, The Art of William Kurelek,” Toronto, 1999, page 67, reproduced in colour.

Note:

“Yukon Trappers’ Stop” belongs to Kurelek’s celebrated Big Lonely series, a collection of paintings composed over the span of almost two decades. In a detailed description by the artist on Isaacs Gallery letterhead, Kurelek described these paintings as expressing a type of sublimity: “It is that its enormity dwarfs and dominates life, all life, both man and animal...” The Big Lonely series was named after the colloquial term used to describe Canada, specifically western Canada, an environment familiar to the artist since his childhood in the Prairies. Patricia Morely describes Big Lonely as one of the series which “confirms Bill’s feeling for the vastness of Canada, and for nature as a source of joy.”  Kurelek noted how the series reflected his very own experience as a “loner” who had seen this vastness of the country firsthand through his travels, having found comfort in such secluded immensity.

In this work, Kurelek’s imagination conjures up a wonderful vision of the Yukon trapper. The artist described the trappers’ journey: “A Yukon trapper must feel a special warmth towards his little cabin stops, after a long day of checking his trap lines.” The solitary figure trudges along a path carved into the deep snow, the bewildering, boundless space of the Canadian north juxtaposed with the serenity of isolation in the wild.

Morely describes Kurelek's childhood as one where “he had frequently been moved to semi-mystical states of ecstasy by the play of wind and light on a natural landscape.” Through the use of a perspective that elongates the night sky and shrinks the human presence, Kurelek succeeded at not only expressing the isolation of the northern wilderness, but also maintaining the survival of humanity. Kurelek wrote: “I don’t want to belabour the threatening aspect of nature as we Canadians know it, for actually I mean this series to be enjoyed as pure poetry...” Poetry is certainly achieved in “Yukon Trappers’ Stop”; the aurora borealis illuminates the sky in glorious dancing rhythms of blue and green pigment, providing a wondrous guiding light to the lonesome trapper.